Ukrainian post offices are selling a stamp showing a Ukrainian soldier giving the middle finger to the “Moskva”, the Russian flagship sunk Thursday in the Black Sea.
A stamp depicting a Ukrainian soldier giving the middle finger to the “Moskva”, a Russian flagship sunk Thursday in the Black Sea, tore up on Friday through post offices across the country, becoming a collector’s item and a symbol of “victoire”.
Read alsoWar in Ukraine: the Russian cruiser Moskva sank, after being damaged at sea
At the Central Post Office in Kyiv, hundreds of Ukrainians of all ages lined up for several hours to get the first rectangular stamp that was to be printed in one million copies. “This boat was their biggest, it was worth around 750 million dollars, they bet everything on it and we destroyed it!” exults Ioury Kolessan, 22, who waited two and a half hours to buy a sheet of 30 stamps. “It’s a new stage of the war, that of victory”he assures.
On the first day of the conflict, in a radio exchange that went viral, Ukrainian border guards on the small island of snakes launched “kiss my ass” to the Russian ship asking him to surrender. The recording of this exchange had toured the world and served as a leitmotiv for the Ukrainian resistance, even appearing on placards during demonstrations of support abroad and now on stamps.
500 suggestions before finding the right illustration
La Poste had launched a competition in early March to illustrate the episode. After more than 500 submissions, the illustration by Lviv cartoonist Boris Groh, showing a Ukrainian soldier from behind on yellow sand giving the Russian ship the middle finger on a blue background, was selected. “When we designed the stamp we did not know the outcome of this episode but we are delighted”, commented to AFP Igor Smelyansky, director general of the Ukrainian post. The Ukrainian general staff got involved, rectifying the uniform to “more realism”.
The stamp was already out of stock on Friday afternoon in kyiv, AFP journalists found. “We will do better on Monday, we wanted to print more, but the bombing last night in kyiv disrupted the operation of the factory and we were unable to print the planned quantity”, justified the director general of the postal services.
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